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Abu Qatada, wanted by Jordan for involvement in terrorist attacks, strolls down a London street, carrying groceries paid for by the British taxpayer. Beside him, on a mobile phone, apparently acting as a go-between, is Yasser Al-Sirri, wanted by Egypt for aiding an assassination attempt in 1993 of the then Prime Minister with a car bomb, which instead killed a young girl. Both these men despise the country that is sheltering them. [...] Supported by state benefits, Qatada began preaching in local mosques his blood-thirsty anti-Jewish and anti-Christian messages and calling for Muslims to kill non-Muslims. Because of a toxic...

Former IRS Employee Sued for Tax Scam Chicago (Sept. 5, 2008) By WebCPA staff | The Justice Department has accused a former Internal Revenue Service secretary of cheating her tax prep clients and the government out of approximately $850,000. The government filed suit in a federal district court in Chicago seeking a permanent injunction against Debra Windham to prevent her from preparing tax returns from others. Windham, who prepares returns under the business name Special Circumstances, allegedly claimed false deductions for her clients and then applied without their knowledge for refund anticipation loans in their names.

The Wilmington (Del.) News Journal takes a look today at some of the real estate transactions of Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del. Biden is one of the least wealthy members of Congress, but he enjoys a splendid home because of real estate deals with political supporters. The Bidens live "on a four-acre lakefront estate in a 7,000-square-foot custom home" in Greenville, Del., a property worth at least $2.5 million. Reports the newspaper: "In 1996, Biden sold a home in Greenville for the asking price of $1.2 million -- more than six times what he paid two decades earlier -- to John...

BERKELEY -- Except for a lone redwood holding four tree-sitters, UC Berkeley today finished cutting down the long-embattled Memorial Stadium trees that protesters had been fighting to preserve for 21 months. Arborists removed 42 oaks, redwoods, laurels, and other trees from the grove, leaving 28 around the perimeter. Several others, including a mature redwood, are slated to be transplanted to make way for a $124-million student athlete training center. The university has no immediate plans to forcibly extricate the tree-sitters, but hopes they'll come down voluntarily now that the grove has been removed, said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof. The campus...

PASADENA, Texas — Two teenage girls are accused of stabbing a 75-year-old man to death in a robbery that netted them just $15, and police say the mother of one of the teens helped put them up to it. Dannette R. Gillespie, 38, gave knives to her 15-year-old daughter and Vanessa Anne Ocampo, 19, then waited in the back seat of their car while the teens robbed and killed Eugene Palma, according to a probable cause warrant. ... Ocampo told investigators they went to the bar and followed Palma home when he left. Gillespie handed knives to her daughter and...

Charles Rangel, a man who writes federal tax laws as head of the House Ways and Means Committee, not only failed to pay taxes on income he received from a luxury resort property he owns, he financed the purchase with an interest-free loan from a campaign backer who is also a politically active lawyer. David Kocieniewski and David M. Halbfinger report in the New York Times:.....

Two Canadian teens were handed a year’s probation for trashing a home while the owners were on vacation, and leaving behind a nasty present, according to the Globe and Mail. Among the $10,000 in damages was writing scrawled on the kitchen window and cabinets: "You had a nice cat" and "it's in the microwave." Princess, the cat, "was screaming in the microwave for 10 minutes while it was essentially cooked to death," Prosecutor John Laluk reportedly told the court.

Scientists preparing to fire up the world's largest atom smasher are being flooded with phone calls and emails – even death threats – from people worried that the Large Hadron Collider, when activated, will obliterate planet Earth.

CLAIRTON, Pa. - Five days a week, Linda Graham trolls tattered neighborhoods of this once thriving steel city outside Pittsburgh for unregistered voters she can sign up as Democrats — one of thousands of unknown volunteers whose work outside the limelight has already altered the basic arithmetic of the November election. The epic nomination battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton helped put millions more Democrats on the voter rolls while Republican registration declined. Now Graham, 45, has taken three months of unpaid leave from her job at Pittsburgh's Central Blood Bank in the hope of adding to those...

Press Release - For Immediate Release: - 09/04/08 SERVICE OF LAWSUIT CHALLENGING SENATOR OBAMA’S RIGHT TO BE A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT BECAUSE HE DOES NOT MEET THE QUALIFICATIONS HAS BEEN COMPLETED Contact information at the end of this press release. Documents filed with the court and a copy of this press release can be downloaded at the end of this press release. (Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania – 09/04/08) - Philip J. Berg, Esquire, the Attorney who filed suit against Barack H. Obama challenging Senator Obama’s eligibility to serve as President of the United States, has received confirmation from his Process Service...

WASILLA, Alaska- Back in 1996, when she first became mayor, Sarah Palin asked the city librarian if she would be all right with censoring library books should she be asked to do so. According to news coverage at the time, the librarian said she would definitely not be all right with it. A few months later, the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she was going to be fired. The censorship issue was not mentioned as a reason for the firing. The letter just said the new mayor felt Emmons didn't fully support her and...

DESPAIR among human rights workers in Pakistan over a rash of so-called "honour killings" intensified yesterday when it was disclosed that a girl forced into marriage with a 45-year-old man at the age of nine had been killed by her parents because she asked for an annulment. The girl, 17, who had been fighting a lonely but successful legal battle, was coming out of court in the Punjabi city of Sahiwal after being granted the annulment by a judge when she was surrounded by a group of men and shot in view of police. The death of Saira Nusrat...

An insider's view: Gov. Sarah Palin's attack on corruption is no cliché. Last night, the nation had its first opportunity to really size-up the hockey mom from Wasilla. Does she have what it takes to be vice-president? And how about those claims that she's a reformer, fighting against entrenched corruption in Alaska? As a former federal judge in Alaska and a lawyer involved in litigation with Alaska's oil companies, I've got a pretty good perspective on this. Whether you embrace her political positions or not, no one can reasonably deny that she's the real deal when it comes to placing...

The Compton city attorney's office is investigating a $1-per-lot sale of government land to a housing corporation that failed to receive the tax-exempt status it sought and is associated with a Los Angeles labor union mired in a spending scandal. The housing group was established as a nonprofit in 2004, but never received an Internal Revenue Service exemption and had lost its right to do business in California for not filing its tax returns, The Times disclosed last month. It was founded under the direction of Tyrone Freeman, president of the Service Employees International Union local, whose financial practices are...

Obama’s public image has suddenly begun to revert from the carefully choreographed caricature of the bike-riding savior of the planet to the more candid and accurate picture of the Chicago political machine operative with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. The Obama-Biden campaign also understands that the McCain-Palin ticket is not without nostalgia of its own. This pair embodies the American pioneering spirit. They represent flyover country, the real America that most Americans live in beyond the media and financial center of New York, the political center of Washington, and the mind-numbing popular culture of Hollywood...

WHITEMARSH - In a society criticized for being too litigious, lawsuits filed by local maverick attorney Philip Berg rank as some of the most sensational. In the past decade, Berg challenged the results of the 2000 presidential election, sued the Bush administration in 2004 for alleged complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks and filed a suit recently claiming that Sen. Barack Obama is not really a U.S. citizen. After the U.S. Supreme Court's election decision, the Lafayette Hill lawyer demanded that three Supreme Court justices be disbarred for alleged conflict of interest. Several counts in the Sept. 11 lawsuit were...

Link only, AP.

Dipped Jewitt has the purrfect opportunity to make sure the interests of pets are represented in the upcoming election. She recently was given the chance to vote via mailed registration materials sent by the USAction Education Fund, which describes itself as a national nonprofit, nonpartisan group that has organized voter-registration drives since 2004. But there's one problem - Dipped Jewitt is a cat. She received the voter registration application, addressed to her, at her former domicile in Cleveland where her owner, Jeff Jewitt, 54, runs Homestead Finishing Products. Initially taken aback by the application, thinking it was a joke, Jewitt...

The uproar continues over the recent statements of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who defended her pro-abortion stance or, to be more nuanced, her “pro-choice” stance supporting a woman’s “right” to choose between having a child or an abortion. In her statement, she made it clear she was speaking “as an ardent, practicing Catholic” about “an issue that I have studied for a long time.” After saying that “the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition” of when life begins, she cites Saint Augustine to buttress her thesis and concludes that abortion is a decision “that...

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is being invited by her hometown archbishop to discuss her erroneous views on the Catholic Church's teaching on abortion. In a statement released today, Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco joined the list of bishops who have responded to Pelosi's misrepresentation of Church teaching, which she expressed during an interview Aug. 24 on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press." Catholic San Francisco, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, published Archbishop Niederauer's text.Pelosi, when asked to comment on when life begins, said that as a Catholic, she had studied the issue for "a long...

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s new Windows ad, featuring Jerry Seinfeld, is outdated and not very funny -- but it's highly revealing of all that's wrong out there in Redmond. The background: Windows is losing market share to Apple's Mac OS and even Linux. And Vista, the latest version, has been a big fat dud. Businesses have shunned it outright, and many consumers find it unintuitive and difficult to use. So, Microsoft hired "award winning" agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky -- at a reported cost of $300 million -- to give Vista, and the Windows franchise in general, an image makeover. The...

2/4/2007 Axelrod paved the way for Obama By: Cao, Filed under: Demonrats , General , Hitlery , Keyes/Obama , Obama @ 6:39 am There was a question that came up yesterday about Blair Hull’s difficulties here in Illinois, and what in the heck precipitated it? We all have our theories, right? What I’m looking for is some kind of documentation to attest to the facts in this; bearing in mind that Obama’s chief media advisor at the time was David Axelrod, who was an advisor to the Clinton campaign. Axelrod, in fact, railed against the politics of personal destruction in...

GOP Sen. John McCain is "absentminded" and "terrible" and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, doesn't have any appropriate experience. Sen. Barack Obama, by contrast, is "highly educated" and "eloquent" and would serve the world much better and improve America's overall situation. And Sen. Joe Biden is a "very respectable" man with a "good reputation." All this according to an interview broadcast this week on Iranian state-run media. "[McCain] doesn't know anything, poor thing. He is terrible. Let me tell you, he's awful," stated Mohammad-Ali Fardanesh, a political science professor at Shahid Behshti University, which is an Iranian state-funded school....

JOHN W. SCHUTT, Jr. ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Candidate for School Trustee, District E MEDIA RELEASE September 4, 2008 Complaint filed with Nevada Commission on Ethics against Trustee Janison Ethics complaint filed against Clark County School Trustee Terri Janison On September 3, 2008 Clark County School Trustee District E candidate John W. Schutt Jr. filed an Ethics complaint with the Nevada Commission on Ethics against Trustee Terri Janison. This complaint was filed on behalf of the citizens of Clark County due to Janison’s continued unethical behavior. The basis of the complaint is the thousands of dollars that Janison has taken from various construction companies...

A bitter political-cultural confrontation that exploded in Nicaragua in late August could mark the final end of the passionate romance between the world’s leftist intellectuals and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. Ortega, you may recall, was the leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front when it seized power after overthrowing the 40-year Somoza family dynasty. A dashing young revolutionary who electrified liberals and leftists around the world, Ortega served as Nicaragua’s president for most of the 1980s. He lost power in 1990, but after 16 years in opposition, he was elected president again in 2006. For years — in and out...

Sandblasting has restored the exterior of Courthouse 1 and the connecting colonnade to Courthouse 2 on the Anbar Judicial Complex in Ramadi. Photo by USACE. BAGHDAD — The $21.5 million renovation and new construction at the Anbar Judicial Complex in the provincial capital of Ramadi is under way by the Gulf Region Division on palace sites of the Saddam Hussein family.  Courtrooms and judges’ chambers will be located in palace buildings formerly used by Saddam and his infamous sons, Uday and Qusay, at the so-called “Hurricane Point� on the Euphrates River.  Ramadi is one of several Sunni-majority towns along the...

PINE TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- A doctor is accused of hitting and killing a motorcyclist with his car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in northern Allegheny County after leading police on a high-speed chase early Thursday morning.Pennsylvania State Police said the motorcyclist -- Keith Brown, 46, of Green Bay, Wis. -- was struck near mile-marker 33 in Pine Township at about 5 a.m.Police said the driver who hit the motorcyclist is Shiva Lal Acharya, 33 (pictured below). Trooper Robin Mungo of the Pennsylvania State Police says Lal Acharya, who is a medical doctor from Illinois, ran from the crash scene. Mungo also...

BERKELEY - Crews began cutting down trees next to Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley late Friday, 21 months after activists climbed into the trees to protest the university's plan to raze them to build a $140 million sports training center center. Work crews with chainsaws and bulldozers arrived at the university grove Friday and by 4 p.m. six trees had been chopped down. Clad in black ski masks, the four remaining tree protesters who were driven into a single redwood several months ago, remained in the tree Friday and at times sparred with arborists, tossing a bottle and branches toward...

A 29-year-old Morristown man accused of holding his wife under water in a bathtub and then staging it to look like an accidental drowning was indicted on a murder charge yesterday. Kleber Cordova faces life in prison for the death of Eliana Torres, 26, who died May 14, five days after authorities say he held her under water for three minutes in their Western Avenue apartment. Cordova's alleged cover-up was undone by the couple's 8-year-old daughter, who told police she saw her mother struggle with him shortly before police arrived and pulled Torres out of the tub on the morning...

The government's key cooperator in the investigation of a Sussex County company that made and sold defective air filters to the military for use in tanks was placed on probation for two years yesterday for his role in the scheme. Robert J. Spadaro, 67, of North Port, Fla., was also ordered to serve four months of home confinement with electronic monitoring and to make restitution of more than $380,000. He was spared a fine by U.S. District Judge William H. Walls in Newark because it was determined he had no ability to pay. Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Moscato described Spadaro,...

Comedian Bill Maher cracked a tasteless “joke” involving Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Down syndrome child — and referred to the Alaska governor as a “stewardess.” In the monologue of his most recent HBO show, Maher noted that Palin has five children including an infant “that has Down syndrome. She had it when she was 43 years old. And it looks a lot like John Edwards.”

Aaron Schnore was wasted. But when he saw that mechanical bull at Johnny Utah's, he knew he had to ride it. He was going to ride the shit out of that thing. He was going to show that mechanical bull who was boss. And he did, for a while. Until some freakin' employee turned up the speed so that Schnore would get thrown off. WTF? Schnore was P.O.-ed. He had really been enjoying his ride — the rush that came to him from owning that mechanical bull as he bucked and twisted like the Cowboy of Rockefeller Freaking Center. And...

Bad news for straying Democrats. Maybe even "dramatically" bad news. Gov. Jon Corzine says he's running for re-election next year and knows corruption will be an issue -- especially if U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie is his opponent. So he will try to get ahead on the issue, and that could mean some fellow Democrats might pay the cost. "I've already been criticized by my party for how aggressive our Attorney General's Office has been," said Corzine in an exclusive interview at the end of last week's Democratic National Convention in Denver. "But I want to give the people of New...

Does the NYPD guard churches during Lent or Advent? Doubtful. Jewish synagogues during Passover or Yom Kippur? Perhaps, but certainly not with anywhere near the show of force it will apparently display around mosques during Ramadan. From the New York Daily News:The NYPD Tuesday announced heightened security for the city's mosques during the upcoming Islamic holy observance of Ramadan.Local precincts will dispatch more officers on foot patrol and in squad cars to patrol the areas surrounding the mosques during the month-long religious observance that begins on Monday."Collaboration with the public is a vital ingredient in our efforts to keep...

The Left has watched uneasily as power drains away daily from the CBS Newses and the Time magazines of the liberal mainstream media and flows toward a more politically pluralistic array of new media alternatives that range from (mostly) conservative talk radio to (Fox-dominated) cable news to the ceaselessly expanding (thoroughly bi-partisan) Internet. And make no mistake: liberals want to snuff out this exciting, democratic world of analysis and debate and return to the good old days, when you got up in the morning with The New York Times and had dinner with Dan Rather—and basically kept quiet while your...

BIDEN'S SON IN FUND SUITBy KAJA WHITEHOUSE Posted: 4:35 am August 31, 2008 Hedge fund executive Hunter Biden has had anything but a quiet introduction to his career in finance. The 38-year-old son of Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden is caught up in several lawsuits regarding the acquisition and operation of Paradigm Companies, an investment firm that operates a fund of funds - a hedge fund that invests in other hedge funds. Biden also appears to be feuding with partner James Park, the son-in-law of the Rev. Sun Myoung Moon, Court papers show. Biden, also a Washington lobbyist,...

BERKELEY, CA (KGO) -- U.C. Berkeley may begin cutting down the oak trees at the center of an ongoing battle. They pulled out the chainsaw after a huge legal victory on Thursday. At about 8:30 am on Friday, the chainsaws started up and branches of the tree that is home to the four remaining tree sitters began coming down. U.C. says this is the beginning of the end, but supporters say they are not giving up without a fight. For starters Friday morning, tree cutters removed every branch below their first platform. "We want to continue to make conditions for...

Keep it up, folks. Us Weekly is feeling the heat. And now, they are pleading with readers to stick with them. Reader Susanna sent the following protest e-mail: During tense political times, it’s always nice to open up US Weekly and lose myself in some mindless gossip and fashion news. So imagine my DISGUST when I saw this week’s US Weekly cover: a revolting, sensationalist, bottom-feeding, partisan attack on mother and career woman Sarah Palin. You know, I’ve been rolling my eyes at your adoring coverage of Barack Obama, but I’ve put up with it in order to be...

The Obama campaign talks a lot about new ideas and expanding the political map, but in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which the campaign has focused on almost exclusively since the Democratic convention, old-school issues still rise to the fore. The latest example came Friday during a small political event at SCHOTT North America Inc., a glass factory in Duryea, Pa., where even a hand-picked crowd threw Barack Obama a curve ball. A woman in the crowd told Obama she had “heard a rumor” that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted...

ISLAMABAD - Police resorted to light baton charge to disperse a rally of leaders of bar associations and civil society activists converging here from across the country to demand restoration of deposed judges including chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. President of Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, who led the rally outside the Parliament House, rejected government’s move to invite judges to take fresh oath after reappointment though with previous seniority. He said the government action is illegal and can be challenged by new judges who claim to be senior to the reappointed judges under the constitution. He...

Report: Maine growth modest Conditions are likely to deteriorate in 2008 AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Center for Economic Policy released its annual Labor Day report outlining the status of working Mainers and the state economy. Using 2007 U.S. government data (the most current available), "The State of Working Maine" reveals a picture of modest overall growth in Maine, coupled with limited income gains for typical Maine households. Median household income in Maine saw an increase of some $1,200, rising by 2.7 percent in real terms to $45,888. Though a welcome advance for working Mainers, it is also clear that...

The state’s largest teacher’s union says teachers who have sex with their 18-year-old students should not necessarily face felony charges. The Washington Education Association filed a “friend of the court” briefing in the state Court of Appeals case of former Hoquiam High School choir teacher Matthew Hirschfelder, accused of having sexual relations with one of his 18-year-old students. “Eighteen- year olds aren’t kids,” union spokesman Rich Wood said. “They are minors. … And should consenting adults be subject to criminal charges? That’s the question behind this case and this law.” Hirschfelder has been charged with first-degree sexual misconduct with a...

Saturday, August 30th 2008 Johni Maziku, a 27-year old man, was killed Saturday night outside the capital city, Nairobi during a car jacking attempt. Maziku directed U.S.F.K (United States For Kenya) a small-independent US born program to bring kenyan refugee's of ethnic violence a second chance to life in East and Central Africa. He would have turned 28 in October. Maziku who was not a native born kenyan, recently returned to Kenya after his brief stay in Albany, NewYork to handle some affairs concerning his younger sister Saamya Maziku. Saamya Maziku, a wildlife biologist who fled the country after the...

(WXYZ) In the wake of his resignation, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's name will be taken off the water tower at the Detroit Zoo.

Rep. Charles Rangel paid no mortgage interest on a beach resort property for about 15 years, a lawyer for the powerful House committee chairman said Friday. Davis said Rangel failed to report rental income from the resort property on his taxes, but didn't realize it was necessary because of the way the deal was structured.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – House Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, failed to report $75,000 of income from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic, his attorney said on Friday. The Democratic congressman, who has represented New York City's Harlem district for 38 years, plans to file an amendment to his previous tax returns and likely has no federal tax liability on the investment, lawyer Lanny Davis said. Rangel probably owes nothing to the federal government because of depreciation and foreign tax credit, but he may owe a few thousand dollars to the state...

Police work is often a stressful endeavor, but not for the reasons you might think. Yes, there is the risk of being shot, stabbed, or clubbed in the head, but most cops will tell you that the threat to life and limb is not, in fact, the most stressful aspect of working the streets. Rather, what really gets the bile flowing in a cop’s gut is the nonsense he must routinely endure, nonsense that rains down upon him in torrents from incompetent superiors and craven politicians....

Gov. Sarah Palin is taking the wrong approach to Troopergate. She should be practicing the open and transparent, ethical and accountable government she promised when running for governor and boasts about now that she's on the national stage. Instead, Gov. Palin has begun stonewalling the Legislature's attempt to get the bottom of allegations that she, her family or staff violated ethical or state personnel rules. As a result, the Troopergate allegations hang over Palin's future and cloud her candidacy for vice president....

A man is under arrest in Washington after an improvised explosive device, a rifle and some ammunition were allegedly found in his jeep, Capitol Police said Friday. The man stopped to ask police for directions near the Capitol building at about 11 a.m. EDT Friday, at the intersection of 2nd and Independence Avenue Southeast, according to Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider. The officer responding noticed a rifle case on the car seat and inspected the jeep, discovering the IED, rifle and ammunition. A canine unit was enlisted to help.

H/t Kimberly M. Did the Code Pink members who interrupted John McCain's speech last night use MSNBC press badges to get into the hall? Not according to Code Pink itself, which claims the two women "obtained passes to the convention from disaffected Republicans." Right. There is another much more intriguing explanation out there. According to Shay at Booker Rising, which describes itself a newsite for black moderates and black conservatives [emphasis added]: "I took the shuttle bus back to Minneapolis, and I overheard a convention organizer named Phil telling a convention delegate that the protesters on Wednesday night got through...